The present invention relates to a chopper or a comminutor.
More particularly, it relates to a chopper with a rotatable cutting tool having cutting teeth and a stopping body with a working side located in a plane extending in an axial direction of the cutting teeth at a distance from them.
Choppers of the above mentioned general type are known in the art. One such chopper is disclosed for example in European Pat. document EP 469 380A1. In the chopper of this type the pressing plate is arranged without any distance relative to the cutting tool provided with the cutting teeth. The cutting point or in other words the place of separation of the chopping product, is therefore arranged relatively high. Thereby the chopping product is squeezed and thrown through a relatively long friction path, which presumes necessarily a high power drive for the cutting tool.
German document DE-AS 1 102 532 discloses a centrifugal mill in which the distance of the stopping bodies to the cutting teeth is gradually increased and reaches its minimum in the region of the separation. Also in this case the sliding tool must overcome the resistance of the squeezed material which is pulled along the stopping body before it is comminuted. The solutions proposed in the prior art have the common feature that in the case when undesirable and hard objects are located in the chopping product, for example rocks or other small metal pieces, the stopping bodies can be damaged especially in the region of the separation so that a clean cut of the chopping product is no longer guaranteed.